WEEN - At The Cat's Cradle 1992
I bought this for the album cover alone.
Seriously, what the hell am I looking at? Ween sure didn't look like this when I saw them in 2008!
The cd/dvd set captures the duo in their original live format, which was just that. A duo. And a really goofy looking one at that. With plenty of stage banter, no jams, and lots of fun songs, Ween then and Ween when I saw them live seems almost like two different bands. The liner notes imply enough on this, even moreso when they state some of their friends think live ween ended when they stopped doing this kinda stuff.
Disc one, the one with the audio on it, is 77 minutes and 7 seconds of good silly fun Gener and Deaner ******** up the words, thinking they recorded over the DAT deck, playing for what sounds like a crowd of about 10 people...good times.
Setlist is mainly material from GodWeenSatan and Pure Guava, with a few off-shoots and a couple Pod tracks snuck in here or there, and even an early take on a classic.
Overall, listening to it through and through it's hands down the funniest live performance I've ever heard in my life. While most bands I know crack a funny liner here or some bizarre stage banter there on a live set (No Sleep At All by Motorhead, Your Choice vol. 12 by Melvins, EVILIVE, Live 85-86 by Samhain, any Acid Mothers Temple bootleg...), it seems like every song had me cackling like a madman, especially the running joke about overdosing on opium. ******** the Whos, this warmed my heart twenty-one times over.! Plus I got a real good kick out of them doing that riff from Third Stone From The Sun during You ******** Up. Brilliance.
The DVD? Let me gets a player and I'll get back with ya! And with that, the DVD is footage from three different concerts all shot on one camera, which is MONEY right there! The sound and audio are surprisingly good for 1992 footage, and the comedy and flamboyance is in full form. The highlight? Deaner rubbing the guitar plug on his balls & d**k at the end of one of the songs. And even Gener being cut off during The Going Gets Tough From The Getgo. Man, his expression there is ******** priceless. And yes, they bust out that classic Hendrix riff on one of the songs here too. They must've loved the s**t outta Are You Experienced?!
Hands down I have never had this kind of fun listening and watching a band. I enjoyed this even more then when I actually physically saw them live. Listening to that bootleg they sounded obese and a bit slow in the head, but still absurdly good at their instruments. I got my friends hooked on Ween largely by the funnier stuff, so I highly recommend this to any casual listener with a sense of humor or better yet, IS easily humored. Ween fans need not apply to this review, you already got this without questioning. Like myself, but I did it not knowing what I was getting into. and I absolutely love it.
CD - 7/7
DVD - 7/7
Overall - Go get it, it's the best release of the year period./7
Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso UFO - Glorify Astrological Martyrdom
Yes. They recorded this in Sept. 2008 and put it out a month later. Case in point? The japs will s**t in a box and call it an album. Not that this album is s**t, but really, isn't this like the 15th album they put out this year? And best of all, is it an album you should BUY!?
That answer....is YES! Yes you-
Oh wait, no it isn't. Make that a MAYBE. And that's bordering on a ******** NO if you don't even like psychadelia or long jams.
Let's put it in a nutshell. The first track is a contiunation of the previous album they put out this year (Not that guru album with the naked chick with the apocalypse of darkness album with the horrible industrial artwork and the fake bonus tracks) with drone and riff.
The second track is like an actual hard rock song with distant, hard-to-decipher vocals and a million years of jamming. It's pretty much the only good and noticable track and perhaps something they should play live? I'll check archive to find out! So I found a live set from last month and it's something like this...
01 Intro jam-Douchebag
02 Dark Stars in the Dazzling Sky
03 Beefheart improv
04 Pink Lady Lemonade
05 Tsuyama's Improvisation
06 La Novia
07 God Bless AMT
So no, they don't play anything but their two "hits" and jams all the time but still, go download it! Gotta love the same s**t over and over!
The third track is five minutes of HWEH! But since it's AMT it's five minutes of WE WON'T PLAY THIS LIVE!
So do I recommend this? Not really, but do download a bunch of live bootlegs from archive.org. It's free, they support it, and that's where that band comes off as AMAZING.
3/7
Lastly, some stuff I should have reviewed, but didn't for some reason, so without further a-doo-doo....
THE ALBUMS I DIDN'T REVIEW BECAUSE I WAS TOO LAZY AND SKEPTICAL TO ACTUALLY BUY THEM! (And Why!)
Boris - Smile Live @ Wolf Creek (30 bucks for a 2CD import live album may be fine, but it's Boris. Seriously.)
Boris With Michio Kurihara - Cloud Chamber (********, I HATED Rainbow. I'm, skeptical to even consider this.)
Electric Wizard - The Processean EP (30-100 bucks...for an instrumental. Even if I love the Wizard, it's a bit much, especially when I know it won't be as good as Solarian 13, the Hills Have Eyes, Master of Alchemy, Mother of Serpents, Mind Transferral, or Ivixor B/Phase Inducer.)
Melvins - vs. Minneapolis (10 hours of Melvins live sounds cool, but I'm not shelling out 100+ dollars for it.)
Melvins - The Star-Spangled Banner single (I would go to a bar named BuzzO's, though.)
Keiji Haino - The 21st Century Hard-Y-Guide-Y Man: こいつから失せたいためのはかりごと (Love Haino, but apparently not enough to buy an album with a ******** hurdy-gurdy. Give me Haino with GUITAR.)
Boredoms - 77BOADRUM 2CD+DVD (Don't get me wrong, I want this, but 77 ********' 77 DOLLARS. I will get Super Roots 10, cuz' I was totally seizurin' for 9!)
AC/DC - Black Ice (It IS good. I'm just too lazy to fully review it.)
Burning Witch - Crippled Lucifer 2CD (the witch is awesome...but I don't give a s**t, I guess.)
Metallica - Death Magnetic (On the bright side, it has a bass player. If they keep making albums like this, I won't call them SHITallica anymore.)
Duffy - Rockferry (I actually dug Mercy, but I don't go to starbucks, so that'll be a NO.)
Judas Priest - Nostradamus (I almost typed it as Nostradumbass. Loffles.)
White Zombie - Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (The Zombie back when they were actually worth something, but I heard the box set is cheap. So ******** that.)
Grief - Come To Grief re-issue (It got delayed.)
Black Sabbath - Paranoid 3CD super-special-price-gouger edition (Because I REALLY need to hear those alternate takes and quadrophonic mixes.)
Black Sabbath - The Rules of Hell box set (Oh wait, I did KINDA review it.)
And well, every other thing that came out. If Kerrang! gives it a 4/5 or Rolling Stone raves on it, then I probably won't buy it. Jesus, do you think I'm made of money or some s**t!?
